How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius

4. THE CHOICE OF HERCULES

Marcus put his head in his hands and groaned. It wasn’t the devastation caused by the Antonine Plague or the growing threat of barbarian invasion from the North that made him despair for the future of Rome. Rather, it was a party thrown by his brother, Lucius Verus. Lucius and Marcus had always been quite different characters even though they ruled together, but as the years passed, their lives grew further apart. Whereas Marcus increasingly turned to philosophy as his guide, Lucius became notorious for being a hedonist and something of a hell-raiser.

The family ties of Roman nobles could be convoluted. Lucius was not only Marcus’s adoptive brother but also his son-in-law, having married Marcus’s daughter Lucilla. It was therefore said that Marcus looked on him more like a son than a brother. Upon being acclaimed emperor, Marcus’s first act had been to have Lucius appointed co-emperor to rule jointly with him, the first arrangement of its kind in Roman history. Lucius was given Marcus’s family name, Verus; formerly he had been known as Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus. Lucius was a handsome and charismatic young man who probably looked more comfortable than Marcus in the purple robes of an emperor.

[Lucius] Verus was well-proportioned in person and genial of expression. His beard was allowed to grow long, almost in the style of the barbarians; he was tall, and stately in appearance, for his forehead projected somewhat over his eyebrows. He took such pride in his yellow hair, it is said, that he used to sift gold-dust on his head in order that his hair, thus brightened, might seem even yellower.¹

However, although Marcus and Lucius both held the title of emperor, Lucius was clearly subordinate to Marcus and obeyed him in a manner comparable to that of a provincial governor or an army lieutenant.

One reason Marcus had appointed a co-emperor was that Lucius arguably had a claim on the throne: as we’ve seen, Lucius’s natural father died before he could succeed Hadrian. So it was wise of Marcus to persuade the Senate that he should share power with his brother in order to avoid the rise of opposing factions. The Senate feared nothing more than civil war tearing the empire apart, and this measure helped ensure political stability. The histories also imply that Marcus’s poor health influenced the decision. As Lucius was younger by nine years and in much better physical condition, he was primed to outlive Marcus and become his successor. Joint rule meant, of course, that if one emperor died suddenly the other would remain in power, reducing the risk of conflict over the succession.

Moreover, the historian Cassius Dio described Lucius as a younger and more vigorous man “better suited for military enterprises.” As far as we’re aware, Lucius never saw any military service as a young man, but at first he was perhaps more popular with the legions than Marcus. His father had at least served briefly as governor and military commander of Pannonia. As soon as Marcus and Lucius were acclaimed as co-emperors, Marcus sent Lucius to address the legions on his behalf and effectively began treating him as his representative with the military. Marcus and his advisors obviously had the impression that Lucius could be a general in the making. He turned out to be completely useless in this role because he lacked the sense of duty and self-discipline necessary for military life, preferring instead to spend his time drinking and entertaining his friends.

Indeed, Lucius was known for his love of extravagant parties, in marked contrast to his brother. The party that caused Marcus so much concern cost roughly the equivalent of an entire legion’s annual pay. The main expense seems to have been the extravagant gifts the Emperor Lucius showered on his guests. They first received exquisite carving knives and platters and live animals of the same type as they were eating during each course, a menagerie of birds and four-legged creatures. Then they were given fine goblets made from semiprecious stones and Alexandrine crystal. Next, silver, gold, and jeweled cups, garlands entwined with gold ribbons and out-of-season flowers, and golden vases containing rare ointments were handed out. The guests were entertained by private gladiatorial bouts and they drank and played dice until dawn. Finally, carriages with mules dressed in silver trappings carried them home; the carriages were theirs to keep, along with the handsome young slave boys who had been serving them. You can’t buy good friends, though, and the extravagance attracted a retinue of greedy and dissolute hangers-on who encouraged the worst aspects of Lucius’s character.

The Historia Augusta paints Lucius in a very negative light overall, as a vain and self-indulgent buffoon. The picture painted of Lucius contrasts dramatically with that of Marcus as a bona fide Stoic. Even if the stories exaggerate Lucius’s vices, there’s probably at least a grain of truth in them. For instance, despite ruling as Marcus’s co-emperor for nearly a decade, Lucius is virtually relegated to a footnote in The Meditations. Marcus says only that he’s grateful for having had a brother “who by his character was able to stimulate me to cultivate my own nature, and yet at the same time heartened me by his respect and affection,” perhaps damning Lucius with faint praise.² Marcus speaks with artful vagueness here but perhaps meant that he became more determined to strengthen his own character after observing his brother’s vices spiraling out of control. However, Marcus was relieved that Lucius remained loyal to him, showing “respect and affection” rather than dividing the empire by siding with those who opposed his rule. We can tell that this was a very real danger from the civil war instigated against Marcus six years after Lucius’s death by his most celebrated general, Avidius Cassius.

In their youth, Marcus and Lucius both shared a love of hunting, wrestling, and other active pursuits, and both trained in Stoic philosophy. However, whereas Marcus increasingly dedicated himself to the study of rhetoric and philosophy and diligently worked his way up through ascending roles in public office, Lucius seems to have done very little except enjoy a life of leisure. While the younger brother was at the chariot races, gladiatorial games, or banquets with his friends, Marcus was poring over books, gaining crucial knowledge of Roman law and the bureaucracy of government. You could say Lucius chose pleasure before work; Marcus, work before pleasure.

My interpretation is that Lucius organized his whole life around the pursuit of empty pleasures as a form of emotional avoidance. Psychologists now know that people often engage in habits they consider pleasurable—from social media to crack cocaine—as a way of distracting themselves from or suppressing unpleasant feelings. In Lucius’s case, alcohol and other diversions perhaps offered him a way to escape worry about his responsibilities as emperor. As we’ll see, there’s nothing wrong with pleasure unless we begin craving it so much that we neglect our responsibilities in life or it replaces healthy and fulfilling activities with ones that are not.

Chasing empty, transient pleasures can never lead to true happiness in the long run. However, pleasure can be tricky—it can lure us in by posing as something it’s not. What we’re all really seeking in life is the sense of authentic happiness or fulfillment the Stoics called eudaimonia. Lucius, though, was looking for it in entirely the wrong places: cheering on the carnage of the arena, heaping lavish gifts on dubious friends, and drinking himself into oblivion. Of course, the banqueting habits of a decadent Roman emperor might seem an extreme example of someone allowing their hedonistic urges free rein. However, the basic psychology of desire isn’t much different today. People still confuse pleasure with happiness and often find it difficult to imagine another perspective on life. By contrast, the Stoics taught Marcus that we all seek a deeper and more lasting sense of fulfillment. They taught him that this could only be obtained by realizing our inner potential and living in accord with our core values, not being led astray by superficial feelings. Marcus’s and Lucius’s lives diverged in this regard until they were heading in quite opposite directions.

There’s something strangely familiar about this tale: the opposing paths our two young Caesars found themselves on as co-emperors could have been lifted from a moral fable. Indeed, while attending the lectures of Apollonius and other Stoics, Marcus must surely have thought of his brother as he listened attentively to their many exhortations to embrace philosophy as a way of life. One of the most famous of these was known as “The Choice of Hercules.” This ancient allegory about choosing our path in life plays a special role in the history of Stoicism. The story goes that by chance, shortly after his shipwreck, Zeno had picked up and read the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia. It portrays Socrates arguing that the virtue of self-control makes men noble and good, whereas pursuing a life of pleasure does not. Socrates begins by quoting a well-known verse from Hesiod:

Wickedness can be had in abundance easily: smooth is the road and very nigh she dwells. But in front of virtue the gods immortal have put sweat: long and steep is the path to her and rough at first; but when you reach the top, then at length the road is easy, hard though it was.

Socrates then goes on to recount “The Choice of Hercules,” which he had learned from Prodicus of Ceos, one of the most highly regarded Greek Sophists.

One day, as a young man, Hercules was walking along an unfamiliar path when he came upon a fork in the road, at which he sat down and began to contemplate his future. Unsure which path to take, he found himself suddenly confronted by two mysterious goddesses. The first appeared as a beautiful and alluring woman dressed in fine clothing. She was called Kakia, although she (falsely) claimed that her friends called her Eudaimonia, meaning happiness and fulfillment. She barged in front of her companion and pleaded very insistently with Hercules to follow her path. It led, she promised, to by far the easiest and most pleasant way of life, a shortcut to true happiness. She told him that he could live like a king, avoiding hardship and enjoying luxury beyond most men’s wildest dreams, all delivered to him through the labor of others.

After listening to her for a while, Hercules was approached by the second goddess, Arete, a less boastful and more modest woman, who nonetheless shone with natural beauty. To his surprise, she wore a grave expression. She warned him that her path led in a very different direction: it would be long and difficult, and would require a great deal of hard work. Speaking plainly, she told Hercules that he would suffer. He would be doomed to walk the earth in rags, reviled and persecuted by his enemies. “Nothing that is really good and admirable,” cautioned Arete, “is granted by the gods to men without some effort and application.” Hercules would be called upon to exercise wisdom and justice and to face mounting adversity with bravery and self-discipline. Overcoming great obstacles through courageous and honorable deeds, the goddess said, was the only true path to fulfillment in life.

Hercules famously chose the heroic path of Arete, or “Virtue,” and was not seduced by Kakia, or “Vice.” Armed with a wooden club and dressed in the pelt of the Nemean lion, symbolic of a more primitive and natural way of life, he wandered from one place to another, as if the whole world were his home. The gods forced him to undertake the legendary Twelve Labors, including slaying the Hydra and ultimately entering Hades, the Underworld itself, to capture Cerberus with his bare hands. He died in extreme agony, betrayed by his jealous wife, who tricked him into wearing a robe soaked in blood contaminated with the Hydra’s poison. However, Zeus was so impressed by his mortal son’s greatness of soul that he granted him an apotheosis, elevating him to the status of a god in his own right.

Not surprisingly, Hercules was the mythic hero most admired by Cynic and Stoic philosophers. His labors embodied their belief that it’s more rewarding to face hardship voluntarily and cultivate strength of character than to take the easy option by embracing comfortable living and idleness. Hence, the satirist Lucian, a contemporary of Marcus, portrayed the legendary sale of Diogenes the Cynic at a slave auction as follows:

BUYER: Is there anyone whom you strive to emulate?

DIOGENES: Yes, Hercules.

BUYER: Then why aren’t you wearing a lion-skin? Though I’ll admit that your club looks like his.

DIOGENES: Why, this old cloak is my lion-skin, and like him I’m fighting a campaign against pleasure, not at anyone else’s bidding, but of my own free will, since I’ve made it my purpose to clean up human life.³

Like the Cynics before them, the Stoics saw the myth of Hercules as an allegory about the virtues of courage and self-discipline. “What do you think Hercules would have amounted to,” Epictetus asks his students, “if there had not been monsters such as the Nemean lion, the Hydra, the stag of Artemis, the Erymanthian boar, and all those unjust and bestial men for him to contend with? Why, if he had sat at home, wrapped up asleep in bedsheets, living in luxury and ease, he would have been no Hercules at all!”⁴ Epictetus tells his students that just as Hercules cleansed the earth of monsters—without complaining—they should set about conquering themselves by purging the base desires and emotions from their hearts.

For Stoics, in other words, the tale of Hercules symbolizes the epic challenge of deciding who we really want to be in life, the promise of philosophy, and the temptation of giving in to pleasure and vice. The moral is that it often requires a Herculean effort to keep to the right path. But wasn’t Hercules’s life unpleasant? As we’ll see, from the Stoic perspective Hercules remained cheerful, despite the terrible things he endured. He enjoyed a profound sense of inner satisfaction knowing that he was fulfilling his destiny and expressing his true nature. His life had something far more satisfying than pleasure: it had purpose.

All of this must have been familiar to Marcus and Lucius from the education they received in Stoicism. Lucius gradually lost interest, though, and turned his back on philosophy. Indeed, while Marcus was busy studying and tirelessly engaged in public office, Lucius was gaining notoriety for his debauchery and his growing infatuation with popular Roman spectator sports. He got himself in hot water by siding with the Greens at the races and thereby offending fans of rival teams, particularly the Blues. He took a golden statue of the Greens’ most prized horse, Volucer, everywhere he went. He also had an enormous crystal wine goblet made that he named in its honor, which “surpassed the capacity of any human draught,” another testament to his notoriety for binge drinking.

By contrast, Marcus, like Hercules in the fable, chose to avoid these sorts of distractions, or at least keep them to a minimum. The unnamed slave from whom he learned so much as a child had wisely counseled him not to take the side of the Greens or the Blues in the chariot races or back different factions in the gladiatorial lists. These were the main forms of public entertainment in imperial Rome, and it seems the “masses” were just as addicted to them as many of us are to spectator sports and reality television today.

Marcus came to loathe all such public events, but he was obliged to attend them at the insistence of his friends and advisors. He seems to have found unnecessary bloodshed vicious and barbaric. Indeed, as emperor, Marcus began to impose many restrictions on the cruelty of the games. He insisted that the gladiators before him use blunted weapons so that they would be fighting like athletes, without any risk to their lives. The thrill of the chariot races was likewise about bloodlust, as horses and charioteers were frequently maimed or killed in this dangerous sport. Marcus tried to see beyond the excitement of the crowd. He adopted a more philosophical attitude to the events unfolding before his eyes, asking himself, Is this really what people consider fun?

For Stoics, feelings of pleasure in themselves are neither good nor bad. Rather, whether our state of mind is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, depends on the things we take enjoyment in. Marcus compares Roman society to the idle pageantry of a procession, where people seem distracted by trivialities, but he reminds himself that he must take his place in it with good grace. Nevertheless, a man’s worth can be measured by the things upon which he sets his heart.⁵ Enjoying the suffering of others is bad. Taking pleasure in watching men risk death or serious injury would therefore be considered a vice by the Stoics. In contrast, enjoying seeing people flourish is good. You might think that’s obvious; however, we can be blinded by pleasure to its consequences for both others and ourselves. Marcus had been taught by his Stoic tutors to examine the sources and consequences of pleasure very closely. He was therefore able, to some extent, to see beyond the prejudices of his own culture. We should likewise learn to enjoy things that are good for us and others, not things that are bad for us. Indeed, there’s a type of inner gratification that comes from living consistently in accord with our deepest values, which can make ordinary pleasures feel superficial by comparison. Marcus has that in mind when he repeatedly tells himself that the goal of his life is not pleasure but action.

At first the people ridiculed Marcus as a snob and a bore because at the games they could see that he was reading legal documents and discussing them with his advisors. He’d been told that he had to show his face at these events to keep the crowds happy, but he wanted to use the time to address the serious business of running the state. Even his tutor and close friend, Fronto, denounced him for being too serious:

On occasion, in your absence, I have criticized you in quite severe terms in front of a small circle of my most intimate friends. There was a time when I would do so, for instance, when you entered public gatherings with a more gloomy expression than was fitting, or pored over a book at the theatre or during a banquet (I am speaking of a time when I myself did not yet keep away from theatres and banquets). On such occasions, then, I would call you an insensitive man who failed to act as circumstances demanded, or sometimes even, in an impulse of anger, a disagreeable person.⁶

Fronto came around to Marcus’s way of thinking in the end. He gradually realized that there was more to life than socializing among the Roman patrician class, whom they both came to view as lacking any genuine warmth or friendliness. Marcus also faced criticism from the old guard for promoting men such as his future son-in-law Pompeianus based on merit rather than nobility of birth. He picked his friends carefully, based on the character traits he most admired rather than what seemed congenial to those of his social class. His friends’ company wasn’t always fun—sometimes they spoke plainly and criticized him—but he embraced them because they shared his values and helped to improve him as a person. He clearly preferred the company of his family and most trusted friends over socializing with the Roman elite. He admits in The Meditations that he craves the simpler but idyllic family life at his peaceful villas in the Italian countryside. Although this was undoubtedly a healthier and more modest way to spend his leisure time compared with Lucius’s riotous banqueting, it was nevertheless a yearning Marcus would soon have to set aside, when the Marcomannic Wars required him to leave Rome for the northern frontier.

Though Marcus shrewdly put away his papers at the amphitheater, he still insisted on working. While he discussed political decisions with his advisors, onlookers assumed he was chatting with them about the games like everyone else. He even found ways to glean life lessons from the games. In wild beast fights he observed gladiators, half eaten and covered with wounds, begging to be patched up so they could throw themselves back into the fight. This reminded Marcus of the way we continue to give in to unhealthy desires despite knowing the harm they do us. Perhaps it also reminded him of his brother, who had abandoned philosophy and embraced a life of debauchery that was clearly destroying him.

Marcus kept Lucius somewhat in check as long as they were together. However, shortly after the two brothers were acclaimed as co-emperors, the Parthian king Vologases IV invaded the Roman client-state of Armenia. The governor of nearby Cappadocia (in modern-day Turkey) rushed to engage the enemy, but his legion was surrounded and annihilated. He was forced to take his own life. This was a humiliating defeat for the Romans, and the conflict rapidly escalated into a major military crisis.

Marcus’s presence was still required at Rome, so he sent Lucius to Syria to take command of the troops massed in the East. However, a journey that should have taken a few weeks ended up taking nine months. The histories allege that Lucius wasted his time hunting and partying along the way. Marcus accompanied him as far as Capua, in southern Italy, before he had to turn back to Rome. As soon as his older brother was gone, Lucius “gorged himself in everyone’s villa” until he became so ill that Marcus had to rush to attend to him at nearby Canusium. Pleasures, as we’ve seen, can blind us to their consequences if we’re not careful. Lucius’s overindulgence would increasingly lead him to neglect both his own welfare and that of the empire.

The Historia Augusta deals harshly with the Emperor Lucius, complaining that when he finally reached Syria, and throughout the course of the Parthian War, away from Marcus’s supervision, the weaker and more degenerate features of his character prevailed.

For while a legate [a Roman general] was being slain, while legions were being slaughtered, while Syria meditated revolt, and the East was being devastated, [Lucius] Verus was hunting in Apulia, travelling about through Athens and Corinth accompanied by orchestras and singers, and dallying through all the cities of Asia that bordered on the sea, and those cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia that were particularly notorious for their pleasure-resorts.

When Lucius eventually reached Antioch, the capital of Syria, far from Marcus’s gaze, he gave himself over entirely to riotous living. He also shaved off his beard to humor his mistress, Panthea. This confirmed that he was turning his back on philosophy once and for all in order to pursue a more self-indulgent lifestyle. The philosopher’s beard had become a surprisingly politicized symbol after years of persecution under previous regimes; for some, at least, shaving it off implied abandoning one’s most cherished beliefs and values. A few generations earlier, presumably speaking of Emperor Domitian’s persecution of philosophers, Epictetus had defiantly exclaimed that if the authorities wanted to cut off his beard, they’d have to cut off his head first.

Marcus had already sent the Roman general Avidius Cassius, a notoriously strict disciplinarian, to take command of the troops in Syria, dragging the dissolute eastern legionaries out of the brothels and drinking houses and knocking the flowers from their hair. No sooner had Lucius arrived to take command, though, than his personal entourage took the place of soldiers in the fleshpots and resorts of the East. The gossip was that Lucius indulged in numerous adulterous love affairs with women and young men in Syria, even though he was married to Marcus’s young daughter, Lucilla. It was there that he picked up the habit of playing dice until dawn. He wandered through taverns and brothels late at night disguised as a commoner, it’s said, getting drunk, ending up in fights, and coming home black and blue. When he was out drinking he liked to smash the cups in the cookshops by throwing coins at them, which presumably started a few brawls. He’d get so inebriated after feasting through the night that he’d typically fall asleep at the banqueting table and have to be carried to his bedroom by the servants.

Indeed, Lucius was notorious for being a heavy drinker. Based on the available information, it seems possible he suffered from alcoholism, accompanied by symptoms of anxiety and depression. During the Parthian War, for example, he wrote to Fronto complaining in desperation of “the anxieties that have rendered me very miserable day and night, and almost made me think that everything was ruined.” He’s probably referring to problems negotiating with the hostile Parthians, but he was clearly overwhelmed by emotional distress. Binge drinking, casual sex, gambling, and partying became his way of coping, albeit badly, with the pressures of his role. The Stoics believed that entertainment, sex, food, and even alcohol have their place in life—they’re neither good nor bad in themselves. However, when pursued excessively, they can become unhealthy. So the wise man sets reasonable limits on his desires, and he exercises the virtue of moderation: “Nothing in excess.” When doing what feels pleasurable becomes more important than doing what’s actually good for us or our loved ones, though, that’s a recipe for disaster. There’s a world of difference between healthy pleasures and unhealthy ones. Lucius had definitely crossed that line.

After the Romans secured victory over the Parthians following six years of war, Lucius finally returned from Syria to celebrate his triumph with Marcus. However, once back at Rome, he paid even less regard to his older brother, and his behavior continued to degenerate. People scoffed that he must have been taking actors prisoner rather than Parthian soldiers because he proudly brought back so many from the East. Nevertheless, Lucius shamelessly invited Fronto, a great rhetorician, to write a history of the war giving Lucius credit for all Rome’s achievements. The truth was that Lucius had left Avidius Cassius and his other generals in command and stayed as far away from the action as possible, touring the region like a celebrity with his entourage of hangers-on. As we’ll see, this negligence was no small matter. Avidius Cassius was able to step into his shoes and gradually became almost as powerful as an emperor himself throughout the eastern provinces.

Lucius hadn’t been home long, though, before the First Marcomannic War broke out along the northern frontier. This time both emperors rode out from Rome together in their military attire. Marcus evidently didn’t think it was a good idea for his brother to go alone, and he didn’t feel comfortable leaving him back at Rome unsupervised. Lucius wanted to remain at Aquileia, in northern Italy, where he could hunt and banquet, but Marcus insisted they needed to cross the Alps to Pannonia, which had been overrun by the Marcomanni and their allies. After the Romans repulsed the initial barbarian incursion, the co-emperors returned to Aquileia at Lucius’s insistence because he yearned to be near Rome. However, in early 169 AD, Lucius was struck with a sudden fainting spell, and he died three days later after being bled by his physicians. We can’t be sure what killed him. There were even rumors Marcus had him poisoned. However, his loss of consciousness, inability to speak, and sudden death are signs of the plague, which was prevalent in nearby cities and legionary camps around this time. Ironically, despite Lucius’s reputation as the younger and hardier of the two co-emperors, he only made it to age thirty-nine, while Marcus, with his notorious frailty, reached nearly sixty.

We might think Marcus was relieved to be rid of his wayward brother, but he probably felt his loss greatly. It came at a time of mounting crises, as disease spread throughout the empire and Marcus was forced to leave Rome for the first time to take up his command on the northern frontier. He must have felt increasingly isolated, in great personal danger, and under a tremendous amount of political pressure. As we’ll see, though, it was within this crucible that The Meditations took shape. HOW TO CONQUER DESIRE

We mentioned Prodicus’s “Choice of Hercules” earlier, but Marcus cites another famous allegory about desire in his notes. It’s one of Aesop’s fables, called “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.” A town mouse once visited his cousin in the countryside, where he was welcomed with a simple meal of rustic food: a crust of bread and some dry oats. However, the town mouse laughed at his cousin’s unsophisticated tastes and peasant fare. Boasting of the luxury and abundance to be found in the town, he insists that the country mouse come back to the city with him for a taste of the good life. The country mouse agrees, and they return to the house where the town mouse lives hidden to feast like kings upon the finest scraps from the owner’s table. However, two dogs hear them scratching around and come hurtling into the room barking, which sends the mice scurrying for cover in fear for their lives.

Once they’ve reached the safety of a mouse hole and caught their breath, the shaken country mouse thanks his cousin for his hospitality but says he’ll be returning to his humble rural dwelling right away. Although the country fare is modest, he prefers the peace and quiet of his own home and a simple life to the dangers of the city. The town mouse’s perilous habits aren’t really the good life at all. They come at too high a cost. The country mouse says he would rather dine like a peasant than risk being eaten alive by ravenous dogs. Reflecting on the moral of this story, Marcus calls to mind “the alarm and trepidation” with which the town mouse perpetually lives because of his greed.⁷ I can’t help but think that Marcus Aurelius saw himself as the country mouse and his brother Lucius as the town mouse.

Just because Marcus saw the “pleasures” that ensnared Lucius as empty and superficial doesn’t mean there was no joy in his own life. We shouldn’t be fooled by the gravity of The Meditations, which consists of semiformal exercises, into thinking that the author had a gloomy personality. His private letters prove that Marcus was a good-humored and surprisingly affectionate man who spent his youth enjoying a wide variety of sports and hobbies. He liked painting, boxing, wrestling, running, fowling, and boar hunting, and the Historia Augusta adds that he was very skilled at playing various ball games. Of course, as the years passed and his responsibilities increased, he dedicated his life to handling the affairs of state and to his training in Stoic philosophy, which helped guide his actions. However, we’re told he was loved by those close to him and seemed pleasant and approachable to others. He was described as austere but not excessively so, humble but not passive, and serious but never gloomy. He clearly took great pleasure in the company of his friends and family.

Marcus was probably a much happier man than his hedonistic brother Lucius was. True, he didn’t experience the highs of all the wild parties Lucius threw, but neither did he suffer the lows, the painful consequences of overindulgence. What he gained instead was the more profound and lasting happiness that the Stoics claimed was the result of living in accord with wisdom and virtue, or at least some glimmer of that ideal state. Indeed, he made it clear that his goal was to achieve the utmost joy in his heart and maintain a “cheerful serenity” throughout the whole of his life. Having glimpsed this inner peace, Marcus was convinced that it was possible to live consistently in that state of mind, even if he was criticized by those around him or was gored by wild beasts.⁸ Socrates himself had remained cheerful while in prison awaiting his execution, and even as he raised the hemlock cup to his lips. At least that was the story. However, Marcus also saw this healthy attitude of cheerfulness in the face of adversity with his own eyes, as exhibited by his beloved Stoic tutors. They had taught the young Marcus that inner calm and happiness are the natural consequences of a life lived well, in accord with genuine wisdom and self-discipline. More importantly, though, he had witnessed evidence of this being their actual way of life, embodied in the actions of these great men even in the face of terrible adversity.

Modern English isn’t well equipped to capture some of the distinctions made in ancient Greek philosophy, especially when it comes to describing emotions and sensations. We use the word “pleasure” very broadly to encompass almost any positive feeling. However, the Stoics distinguished between the sort of pleasure (hedone) we get from “external” things like food or sex or flattery and the deeper sense of inner joy (chara) that Marcus is talking about. Stoic joy is profound. It comes from achieving your fundamental goal in life and experiencing genuine fulfillment, which make ordinary pleasures seem trivial by comparison. Ordinary pleasures often ruffle our minds, especially when indulged in too much. Stoic joy never does this—it’s synonymous with inner peace and knows no excess.⁹ The Stoics refer to it as the pure form of “joy” that someone experiences who is living a truly great life and has attained genuine personal fulfillment (eudaimonia). Of course, none of us are there yet, but all of us may, potentially, glimpse the goal as long as we’re heading in the right direction.

There are two more key points about Stoic joy worth emphasizing:

1. The Stoics tended to view joy not as the goal of life, which is wisdom, but as a by-product of it, so they believed that trying to pursue it directly might lead us down the wrong path if it’s sought at the expense of wisdom.

2. Joy in the Stoic sense is fundamentally active rather than passive; it comes from perceiving the virtuous quality of our own deeds, the things we do, whereas bodily pleasures arise from experiences that happen to us, even if they’re a consequence of actions like eating, drinking, or having sex.

Marcus therefore says that it’s not in feelings but in actions that your supreme good resides.¹⁰

The wise man’s sense of delight comes from one thing alone: acting consistently in accord with virtue.¹¹ Nevertheless, Marcus does elsewhere mention two additional sources of joy. Together these correspond with the three core relationships that Stoic ethics encompassed: our self, other people, and the world as a whole.

1. Contemplating virtue in yourself. As we’ve just seen, Marcus says that the most important source of both “serenity” and “joy” for a Stoic comes from letting go of attachment to external things and focusing on living wisely, particularly by exercising virtue (justice) in our relations with others.

2. Contemplating virtue in others. Marcus also tells himself that when he wants to gladden his heart, he should meditate on the good qualities of those close to him, such as energy, modesty, or generosity. That’s essentially what he’s doing in book 1 of The Meditations when he lists the virtues of his family members and teachers at length, and it helps to explain the important role of these friendships in his life.

3. Welcoming your fate. Marcus also tells himself that rather than desiring things that are absent, as many do, he should reflect on the pleasant aspects of things he already has before him and contemplate how he would miss them if they were not there.¹²

The Greek word for joy (chara) is closely related to that for gratitude (charis). Indeed, the Stoics encourage you to appreciate the external things Fortune has given you. Marcus cautions, however, that you must exercise moderation in this regard. You should not fall into the habit of overvaluing external things and becoming overly attached to them. You can check this, he says, by asking yourself whether you would be upset if the things you value were ever taken away. The Stoics wanted to develop a healthy sense of gratitude in life, unspoiled by attachment. So they practiced calmly imagining change and loss, like a river gently flowing past, carrying things away. The wise man loves life and is grateful for the opportunities it gives him, but he accepts that everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Marcus therefore wrote that it is a characteristic of the Stoic Sage “to love and welcome all that happens to him and is spun for him as his fate.”¹³ People today often feel that this is similar to a famous Latin phrase coined by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: amor fati, or love of one’s fate.

The Stoics emphasize gratitude, but they also accept that there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in healthy experiences, as long as it’s not carried to excess. As mentioned earlier, they certainly didn’t think that pleasurable experiences were a bad thing. Rather, pleasure, and its sources, is morally “indifferent,” neither good nor bad.

In other words, the Stoics weren’t killjoys. Marcus was convinced he could obtain as much healthy enjoyment from the simple things that befell him in life as pleasure-seekers like his brother did from ravenously indulging their unhealthy desires.¹⁴ Socrates had likewise claimed, paradoxically, that those who practice self-control actually obtain more pleasure from things like food and drink than those who indulge in them to excess. Hunger is the best relish, he said, whereas if we overeat we spoil our appetites. Hedonists might accuse Stoics of missing out on life’s pleasures, but Stoics would respond with this paradox: the life of someone like Marcus, who exercises moderation, is surely more pleasant and involves less self-inflicted suffering than the life of someone like Lucius, who lacks self-control and indulges himself far too much.

However, an even deeper paradox lies in the notion that, ultimately, the virtue of self-discipline itself might become a greater source of “pleasure” than food or other external objects of our desire. More accurately, exercising moderation may become a source of personal satisfaction and inner fulfillment that outweighs the ordinary pleasures it seeks to overcome. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re talking about self-discipline that’s exercised wisely, not any sort of self-denial that might actually be foolish or unhealthy. For Stoics the intrinsic value of wisdom, as an end in itself, always surpasses everything else, including the pleasure and other external benefits that may accrue as the result of living wisely. Those are more like an added bonus than the real goal of life. STEPS FOR CHANGING DESIRES

So how do you get rid of unhealthy desires and learn to experience greater fulfillment in life, like the Stoics describe? Most of us find ourselves seeking hedonistic pleasures and indulging in bad habits that can seem difficult to break. Of course, in cases of genuine addiction to drugs or alcohol, you should seek professional advice. However, psychologists working in the 1970s developed reliable ways of changing ordinary habits and cravings. These methods are still being applied by therapists today to issues like snacking on unhealthy foods or fingernail biting. Some of our most persistent habits may be ways of avoiding unpleasant feelings, which leave deeper problems unresolved. However, spending too much time chasing empty pleasures can also prevent us from pursuing activities that we may find genuinely rewarding, such as living more fully in alignment with our core values. Arguably, that’s the most serious problem of all.

For example, people today often complain that they feel “addicted” to social media. They spend many hours online checking messages out of a kind of habit or compulsion, feeling agitated, bored, or uneasy if they try to abstain for any length of time. They obsess about social networks, computer games, television programs, etc., in the same way Lucius did about chariot races and gladiatorial bouts. On reflection, though, few would conclude that this is the most fulfilling way to spend their lives. Nobody has ever had the words “I wish I’d watched more television” or “I wish I’d spent more time on Facebook” engraved on their tombstone. If these empty and passive pleasures provide no lasting sense of fulfillment or satisfaction, the Stoics would caution us against spending too much time on them.

In particular, people suffering from clinical depression may find that unsatisfying pleasures have come to replace the more fulfilling activities that once gave their lives meaning. They can easily end up becoming forms of distraction or sources of emotional numbing.

So you should carefully evaluate your habits and desires in terms of the bigger picture: how much do these pursuits actually contribute to your long-term happiness or sense of fulfillment in life?

I’m going to recommend a simple framework for evaluating and changing your behavior based on a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy and ancient Stoic practices. It consists of the following steps:

1. Evaluate the consequences of your habits or desires in order to select which ones to change.

2. Spot early warning signs so that you can nip problematic desires in the bud.

3. Gain cognitive distance by separating your impressions from external reality.

4. Do something else instead of engaging in the habit.

In addition, consider how you might introduce other sources of healthy positive feelings by:

1. Planning new activities that are consistent with your core values.

2. Contemplating the qualities you admire in other people.

3. Practicing gratitude for the things you already have in life. 1. EVALUATING THE CONSEQUENCES OF DESIRES

How do you identify which habits to change? Modern therapists often help their clients weigh the pros and cons of different courses of action in order to choose among them. Sometimes this is called a “cost-benefit analysis” or “functional analysis.” Of course, people with habits they want to break, such as overeating or smoking, normally say, “I already know this is bad for me!” Nevertheless, if you’re not sure something is a bad habit or an unhealthy desire, you should weigh the consequences of following the desire against those of exercising moderation or doing something else.

For instance, if you regularly watch television for an hour after work, what are the long-term pros and cons of that habit? What could you do instead that would be more consistent with your true values in life, and how would that work out in the long run? Some philosophers, as we’ve seen, claim that the mere act of exercising moderation could become more gratifying itself than indulging in bad habits. Alternatively, you may want to do a “substitute behavior” that’s high on your list of personal values but that might take a little effort to get done, such as phoning a loved one or reading a book. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is not just to reduce bad habits but to introduce more activities that are intrinsically valued and rewarding, like the Stoic virtues. For instance, if it’s important to you to be a good parent, schedule activities that allow you to behave in a manner consistent with this value. Embracing these types of opportunities will help you become more like the sort of person you want to be in life, even if it’s only for a few minutes each day at first. What would happen if you spent more time exercising the virtues you admire, doing things that you find inherently valuable and fulfilling, and less time indulging in the sort of habits that may feel pleasurable but aren’t actually good for you?

In fact, really thinking through consequences of behaviors and picturing them vividly in your mind may be enough in some cases to eliminate the behavior. Epictetus therefore told his students to envision the consequences of an action and determine how it would work out for them over time. We can observe Marcus employing this method, asking himself what each action means for him and wondering whether he’ll have cause to regret it in the future.¹⁵ As we’ve noted, the Stoics liked to break decisions down into simple dichotomies. In “The Choice of Hercules,” likewise, there are basically two paths forward:

1. The path of vice, or following excessive desires and irrational emotions (unhealthy passions)

2. The path of virtue, or exercising self-discipline and following reason and your true values in life

The Stoics often reminded themselves of the paradox that unhealthy emotions such as fear and anger actually do us more harm than the things we’re upset about. Likewise, learning self-control may ultimately do us more good than obtaining all the external things we desire. The virtues of courage and moderation improve our character and our lives in general when they are exercised wisely, whereas most of the things we crave just give us fleeting pleasure.

Therapists find it helpful to ask their clients of their habits, “How’s that working out in the long run?” Often that simple question is enough to motivate behavior change. However, what we’ll call Stoic “functional analysis” can be done much more thoroughly on paper. You might write down the short-term pros and cons of a course of action followed by longer-term consequences. Simply realizing that your desires produce negative results can sometimes change the way you feel and behave. Other times, though, you may need to picture repeatedly the negative effects of bad habits in a very detailed, clear, and vivid manner in order to change them. You may find it also helps to picture the positive consequences of refraining from the desire, mastering it, or doing the opposite of it. It can be helpful to visualize two paths ahead of you, just like the fork in the road that confronted Hercules: for example, quitting smoking versus continuing, exercising versus doing nothing. Spend time picturing how these two paths would grow apart over time, where they might lead you several months or even years from now.

Your primary goal at this stage is to identify which desires or habits you want to overcome and to be clear about the consequences of doing so. Your secondary goal is to boost your motivation by developing a strong sense of contrast between the two paths ahead of you and the benefits of change. Motivation is a well-established key to success when it comes to breaking habits, so it makes sense to begin by doing what you can to boost it. To break a habit you must have a desire for change. However, it’s possible to increase your desire for change, so that’s something you should work on. 2. SPOT EARLY WARNING SIGNS

Now that you’ve considered what sort of habits or desires might conflict with your values and be worth changing, your next step is to “catch them in the wild” by noticing when they’re actually happening. The key is to spot them early so that you can nip them in the bud. This requires patient self-monitoring, especially looking out for the early warning signs of the feelings or behavior you want to change. When done properly, this sort of self-monitoring is effectively a form of training in Stoic mindfulness.

Keep a written daily record of the situations in which you notice the desire emerging. This can be as simple as tallying each time you sense even the slightest inclination to engage in the habit, the first inkling of the desire. It could also be a more detailed record sheet, including rows with columns for the date/time, the external situation (“Where were you?”), the early warning signs you notice, and/or a rating from zero to ten of the strength of the urge and possibly also the level of actual pleasure you experienced if you gave in to it. If you find it helpful, you might also want to record any thoughts you had that facilitated or excused the desire, such as “Just this once won’t hurt!” or “I can always stop tomorrow,” or “I just don’t have the willpower.”

Your first goal should be to study yourself and identify the trigger or “high-risk” situations where the problem tends to arise. Maybe you eat junk food for comfort on particularly high-stress days at work or after you’ve had a fight with a loved one. Look for subtle early warning signs of the behavior that you’d previously overlooked. Become more aware of your thoughts, actions, and feelings so you can catch the desire emerging at an earlier and earlier stage. Look out for signs that typically precede the desire. To continue the junk food example, you may notice that you look at candy in the store and picture yourself eating it. If you’re a smoker, perhaps you become tense or fidget when you’re craving a cigarette. Simple things that people do when engaging in habitual behaviors are hard for them to detect, even though they may be quite visible to an observer—for instance, the expression on their face, the look in their eyes, the way they use their hands, and so on. These early warnings may include the sort of facilitating thoughts mentioned above, such as “I could do with a treat” or “Just this once won’t hurt.”

Many common habits that people want to quit turn out to be of the hand-to-face types, such as fingernail biting, smoking, drinking, or snacking on junk food. People often fidget with their hands before engaging in these habits, such as stroking their chin just before biting their fingernail. Noticing these precursors for the first time can often weaken the habit. A Stoic mentor or a friend you’ve enlisted would be an invaluable asset to you in situations like this. Instruct the person to bring the habit to your attention with a simple gesture like tapping their nose and walking away. People often find it very irritating to be lectured about something they weren’t even aware they were doing. If you’re working alone, you will need to act as though another person is carefully observing you and imagine what they might see.

Learning to catch things at an early stage makes it easier to derail the chain of behaviors that leads to the full desire or passion emerging. Raising awareness of the subtle elements of a behavior also makes it feel less automatic. For instance, most adults can tie their own shoelaces automatically, without thinking about it. However, if you try to teach a child how to do it, you may find yourself suddenly all thumbs. What was habitual and automatic when we didn’t think about it often becomes very clumsy and awkward when we are forced to analyze the steps or do it in a slightly different manner. That’s unhelpful if you’re performing before an audience or playing a sport, where thinking too much about your behavior can cause self-consciousness and disrupt routine actions. Ask someone who’s about to perform a skilled action, like putting in golf, whether they begin doing it by breathing in or out—that will often be enough to confuse them and put them off. The same principle, that self-awareness disrupts the automatic quality of the behavior, can be very helpful when you actually want to break a bad habit. 3. GAIN COGNITIVE DISTANCE

Once you’ve spotted the early warning signs of a craving or habit, you can also help yourself change by noticing the separation between your current perspective and external reality. We’ve already introduced the concept of cognitive distancing from modern psychotherapy. It provides a way of understanding one of the most important psychological practices in Stoicism: that of “separating” our values from external events. When a desire or habit emerges, you can take note of thoughts that encourage it—“I wonder what’s happening online”—and also thoughts or excuses that facilitate it—“It won’t hurt if I just check my social media messages for a second.” Observing these in a detached way, almost as if they were someone else’s thoughts, will help you gain cognitive distance and will weaken the urge to act on them. The Stoics do this, as we’ve seen, in a number of ways. Following them, you might “apostrophize” the thought, speaking to it as if to another person, and say, “You are just a thought and not at all the thing you claim to represent”—the thing itself having no intrinsic value. You might also adapt Epictetus and say “It’s not things that make us crave them but our judgments about things.” We are the ones who choose to assign value to things that look appealing.

It’s as though strong desires and feelings of pleasure are telling us “This is good!” Strong desire makes us forget that there are other ways of viewing the things we crave. However, pausing and gaining cognitive distance, by defusing your thoughts from reality, tends to weaken the strength of your feelings and the hold they have over your behavior.

There are many different ways of gaining cognitive distance. One is to imagine how a role model might perceive the same situation differently. Suppose you’re craving a hamburger. You might use the verbal technique of asking yourself, “What would Socrates do about this desire?” Socrates, as it happens, was careful about his diet and preferred to eat modestly. He thought that self-control was more important than pleasure, as we’ve seen, and if we avoid overeating, we will obtain more enjoyment from our food anyway. You could also ask, “How would Marcus cope if he had the same sort of cravings?” Of course, you might prefer to pick a role model of your own, perhaps someone you know personally, a friend, colleague, or family member, or even a celebrity or fictional character. First, consider what the role model you choose would say to themselves about the desire. How would they react to the initial awareness of the urge? Then consider what they would actually do. Of course, you don’t have to imitate them, but viewing the experience from different perspectives can weaken the strength of the feeling. You may be inspired to problem-solve and think creatively of alternative ways to respond. On the other hand, when people feel overwhelmed by desires or emotions, they can often only imagine one way of looking at events.

Marcus also talks about the importance of breaking things down into their components and reflecting on each part in isolation. The idea is that when we analyze something in terms of its elements and focus on each in turn, asking ourselves whether it alone is enough to overwhelm us, the whole experience will tend to seem more bearable. Similar “divide-and-conquer” techniques are employed in modern cognitive therapy to overcome problematic desires and emotions. We may as well borrow the term used by the early twentieth-century psychotherapist Charles Baudouin, who was influenced by Stoicism, to describe this psychological technique: “depreciation by analysis.”¹⁶ That means breaking any problem down into small chunks that seem less emotionally powerful or overwhelming.

For instance, when engaged in certain actions, such as bad habits of the kind we’ve been discussing, Marcus advised pausing and asking of each step: “Does death appear terrible because I would be deprived of this?” That gave him a way of isolating each part of a habit in turn and casting its value in question.¹⁷ For example, someone smoking a cigarette might ask with each puff whether losing that sensation would really be the end of the world. Someone compulsively checking social media might stop and ask if not reading each individual notification would really be so unbearable. If you practice self-awareness in this way, you’ll often (but not always) realize that the pleasure you obtain from such habits is actually much less than you previously assumed.

Marcus led the dance of the Salii, the ancient leaping warrior-priests, and trained in boxing and wrestling as a youth. He draws on these experiences, making the astute psychological observation that you can spoil the delights of song and dance just by pausing to analyze them into their parts—for example, breaking a melody down into individual notes, in your mind, and asking yourself of each small part: “Would this be enough to overcome me?”¹⁸ Likewise, in the pankration, an ancient sport combining boxing, wrestling, kicking, and choking, analyzing each of your opponent’s moves individually can help you learn to overcome them without feeling overwhelmed. Marcus therefore advised himself to analyze events into their component parts in order to break the spell of passion.

You’ve already learned about the concept of Stoic indifference, or apatheia. It has a very specific meaning—freedom from harmful desires or passions—that the Stoics distinguished from ordinary indifference. It’s not about being coldhearted or uncaring. Whereas Stoics believed that the only true good is wisdom and virtue, we tend to slip into the habit of thinking about external things as if they were more important than fulfilling our own nature. We’ve seen how the Stoics particularly emphasized suspending value judgments about external things. They did this by using language to describe events as objectively as possible. As we’ve seen, they called this firm grip on reality phantasia kataleptike, or the “objective representation” of events.

You can see how this concept could apply to managing unhealthy desires. People often talk about the things they crave in language that’s bound to excite their own desire, even when they realize they’re fostering unhealthy habits: “I’m dying for some chocolate. Why is it so good? It tastes like heaven! This is better than sex.” (It’s mainly vegetable fat, some cacao, and a load of refined sugar.) That’s another example of rhetoric working against you. On the other hand, when you describe food, or anything else you crave, in down-to-earth language, you can feel detached from it. Hadrian, who is thought to have died from a heart attack, greatly admired an extravagant dish jokingly called the tetrapharmacum, or “fourfold remedy,” reputedly invented by Lucius Verus’s father. It consisted of pheasant, wild boar, ham, and a sow’s udder, all wrapped in pastry. By contrast, Marcus would sometimes look at roasted meats and other delicacies and murmur to himself, “This is a dead bird, a dead fish, a dead pig.”¹⁹ An exquisite wine is just fermented grape juice, and so on.²⁰ Viewed from a different perspective, in other words, the things people crave are often nothing to get excited about.

Sometimes these objective representations resemble the notes an ancient physician or natural philosopher may have made documenting their observations of physical phenomena. In modern cognitive therapy, we also suggest that clients think of themselves as scientists, approaching behavior change as an experiment with an attitude of curiosity, detachment, and objectivity. Marcus even applied this way of looking at the world to his sex life. We noted earlier that he had struggled to overcome feelings of anger as a young man. He also briefly mentions having sexual desires that he considered it better not to act upon. In book 1 of The Meditations Marcus says that, looking back, he’s grateful he chose to preserve his sexual innocence for a few years into his adulthood.²¹ He’s also thankful that when he was later troubled by strong sexual cravings, he overcame them and “never touched Benedicta or Theodotus”—possibly a female and male slave in the household of his father, the Emperor Antoninus. We can see that Marcus applied depreciation by analysis to sexual desires. At one point, for instance, he described sex to himself, perhaps as an ancient physician might, as merely the rubbing together of body parts followed by a convulsion and the ejaculation of some mucus.²² Not very romantic, but that’s the point—he was aiming to neutralize inappropriate sexual urges of the kind he struggled to overcome. (He had thirteen children, though, so he wasn’t completely opposed to sex.) The point isn’t to obliterate all desire but rather to moderate unhealthy or excessive desires, which place too much importance on certain types of pleasure. 4. DO SOMETHING ELSE

You’ve identified which desires you want to overcome, learned how to spot their early warning signs, and practiced how to pause and gain distance from them. In a sense, the best thing to do next is nothing. In other words, do not respond any further to the feelings of desire. You can certainly come back to those feelings later if you need to. Take a time-out instead of acting on the desire. You might want to leave the situation where you’re experiencing temptation. Many types of urges only last a minute or so at a time, although they may recur throughout the day. You only have to deal with the present moment, though, one instance of an urge or craving at a time. So having caught those feelings early and reminded yourself that it’s mainly your thinking that’s causing your feelings, just refrain from acting on the desire or go and engage in a different activity instead, something healthy that you find intrinsically rewarding. You are always free to do something else.

For example, suppose you’re in the habit of drinking a glass of wine every evening after work, but that’s gradually turned into a bottle of wine, perhaps sometimes two bottles. That’s not going to be healthy for you in the long run. Perhaps you’ve also decided your evenings would be better spent reading or going to evening classes instead, because that’s the sort of person you’d rather be. You know that being at home in the early evening is your trigger situation for engaging in this habit. You’ve noticed that it starts when you feel bored and agitated, and you tell yourself that you need a drink to relax. Now you’re getting better at catching the urge to drink as soon as it begins to appear. You notice your thoughts, and you’re aware of how they influence your feelings. You tell yourself, “It’s not the wine that makes me feel desire but the way I’m thinking about it.” So having paused and taken a step back from those feelings, the next step is to not pour yourself a glass of wine and to refrain from doing so long enough for the desire to abate. Additional temptations won’t last long, and you can deal with the feeling again in exactly the same way, one step at a time, if it comes back.

Instead of pouring a glass of wine, do something else: perhaps leave the house for a change of scenery. Do something that gives you a sense of genuine accomplishment rather than just a fleeting and empty sensation of pleasure. If you’re determined to break this sort of habit, you can remove temptation by getting rid of any bottles and wine glasses in your house and making a commitment not to buy replacements. You can engage in healthy “substitute behaviors” instead, like drinking fruit smoothies or herbal teas. Of course, what you do will depend on the type of habit that you want to overcome, but you get the general idea.

Ideally, as we’ve seen, your goal is to replace unfulfilling habits and desires with activities that you find more intrinsically rewarding. When we discussed values clarification earlier, we touched on this aspect of Stoicism, which has to do with acting in more “virtuous” ways. Sometimes, though, not doing something, the very act of overcoming a bad habit, might be considered a virtue, something to be valued for its own sake. One of the techniques Marcus employs most frequently in The Meditations is to ask himself what virtue or resource Nature has given him to cope with a particular situation. This is closely related to the question of what character traits we admire most in other people. Marcus says we typically praise the virtue of self-control or moderation in others, which stops us from being carried away by our pleasures.²³ We don’t normally admire anyone for how much junk food they’ve eaten, but we praise their strength in overcoming bad habits such as eating too much junk food.

The Stoics thought that if we want to improve ourselves, we should be guided more by the qualities we admire in other people and our true values and principles than by avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. That sort of hedonistic life isn’t satisfying, and, as “The Choice of Hercules” implies, we can’t flourish as human beings and achieve things we can be proud of until we endure certain feelings of pain or discomfort or forgo certain pleasures.

This perspective arguably comes more to the fore when people have children and they begin to think about what it means to be a good parent. If you want to be a role model for your children, you should ask yourself what sort of person you are and what qualities you want to exhibit. Developing your own character by exercising moderation wisely in your daily life may then become more of a priority than the simple pursuit of pleasure. Of course, the Stoics would go further and argue that we should exercise wisdom, self-discipline, and moderation, not because it sets a good example for our children but because doing so is an end in itself—virtue is its own reward. We aim for wisdom and strength of character not because we’re hoping to gain something else but simply because that’s who we want to be in life.

You’ve also learned how Stoics studied the attitudes and behaviors of role models. For Marcus that included individuals from his own life like Antoninus Pius and Junius Rusticus, and also wise historical figures like Heraclitus, Socrates, and Diogenes the Cynic. The people we often admire have a fairly take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward bodily pleasures such as food and drink, like the attitude Marcus attributed to Socrates and observed in Antoninus. They don’t crave these pleasures or feel addicted to them. They place more value on their own character and integrity. On the other hand, they are able to enjoy pleasures in a healthy way, within reasonable bounds, remembering that they are temporary and not wholly under our control.

Again, it’s enlightening to consider the double standard between the things you desire for yourself and the things you find admirable in others. Many people find the suggestion that they should abandon certain pleasures almost shocking at first. However, the same people often praise and admire others who exercise endurance or self-control and forgo certain pleasures for the sake of wisdom and virtue. Epictetus used Socratic questioning to highlight this sort of contradiction, hidden from view in people’s underlying values. Really seeing that two beliefs are incompatible can weaken one or both of them and help you clarify your core values. The two-column technique that involves listing the things you typically desire in your own life and comparing them to qualities you admire in other people can highlight inconsistencies between the two perspectives. What would happen if you started to desire more of the traits you admire in other people? For example, suppose you replaced your desire to eat chocolate assuming you had one, with the desire to be a fairly self-disciplined person and make healthy choices more consistently? For Stoics the supreme goal is always virtue rather than pleasure. However, healthy pleasures and even a deeper sense of joy may follow as the consequence of living in accord with virtue. ADD HEALTHIER SOURCES OF JOY

We saw earlier that Marcus mentions three sources of rational joy. The first and most important is the joy that Stoics experience by glimpsing their own progress toward wisdom and virtue, and thereby fulfilling their potential in life. In addition to replacing unhealthy habits with more intrinsically valuable activities, you can schedule beneficial activities every day. For example, you might set aside ten minutes each day to write stories for your children. While that might not replace a bad habit, it does introduce a good one, if that’s something that gives you a sense of fulfillment. It’s like setting aside time each day to exercise the Stoic virtues and become more like the people you admire.

What about the joy Marcus says we can obtain by contemplating the virtue of others? That’s related to what we’ve been saying about modeling the attitudes and behavior of others. You might want to set aside time to write down a description of the qualities you most admire in other people, as Marcus does in book 1 of The Meditations, or visualize them in your mind’s eye. Contemplating the virtues of people who are close to you may have the added benefit of helping to improve your relationship with them. Also, how does thinking about the qualities you admire in others affect you, and how might you learn and benefit from this experience?

Finally, remember what Marcus said about feeling gratitude instead of desire. In a sense, to desire something is to imagine having what you don’t have, the presence of something that’s absent. Gratitude, on the other hand, comes from imagining the absence of things that are currently present: What would it be like if you didn’t have this? If we don’t occasionally picture loss, reminding ourselves what life might be like without the things and people we love, we would take them for granted. Keep a journal of people and things that you’re grateful for, perhaps also focusing on what you can learn from them. As Marcus says, though, it’s important to do this in such a way that you don’t end up becoming overly attached to external things. Stoics try to avoid that by reminding themselves that external things, and other people, are not entirely under our control, and one day they will be gone. The wise man is grateful for the gifts life has given him, but he also reminds himself that they are merely on loan—everything changes and nothing lasts forever. Epictetus told his Stoic students to imagine they’re guests at a banquet being handed a sharing plate, not greedily holding on to it and scoffing the lot but politely taking an appropriate share and then handing the rest along. That’s how Stoics think about life in general: they aim to be grateful for external things without becoming overly attached to them.

We’ve now seen how the Stoics aspired to find happiness in healthy ways, through gratitude for the things they have, admiration for the strengths of others, or pride in their own ability to act with dignity, honor, and integrity. Also, remember that for Stoics ordinary pleasure and pain aren’t good or bad but merely indifferent. Their main concern is to avoid becoming hedonistic by placing too much value on physical pleasures, indulging in them, and craving them excessively. A preference, or “light” desire, for pleasurable things and avoiding pain and discomfort is natural for Stoics, within reasonable bounds.

We can apply some of the guidance they left us about how to master our desires today using the framework I described. Evaluate certain habits or desires rationally in terms of their consequences. Write down the long-term pros and cons of indulging in the habit versus overcoming it. Close your eyes and visualize a fork in the road representing two paths, picturing as vividly as you can first the future with unhealthy passions, then the future with wise actions in accord with reason. You can adapt the daily routine mentioned earlier to look like this:

1. Morning Meditation. Think of the rising sun, the stars, and your small space within the whole cosmos. Mentally rehearse the key events of the day, imagining how Socrates, Zeno, Marcus Aurelius, or your own role model would cope with habits or desires. Picture how you plan to cope with any challenges and what inner resources or virtues you can employ.

2. During the Day. Practice Stoic mindfulness by looking for early warning signs of the habits or desires you want to overcome. Try to catch them early and nip them in the bud. Pause and practice accepting any feelings of unease with Stoic indifference. Gain cognitive distance from your thoughts and refrain from acting on your feelings. Engage in healthy substitute behaviors instead, which contribute to a genuine sense of fulfillment. You could also keep a written log or tally of certain habits, as described in this chapter.

3. Evening Meditation. At the end of the day, review how well you fared in terms of acting in accordance with your values—that is, virtues. In relation to desires, consider what you did well, what you did badly, and what you could do differently tomorrow. If it helps, imagine answering these questions before a wise Stoic mentor or even a panel of Sages, and consider what advice they might give you. Use what you learn to help prepare for the next day’s morning meditation.

As we’ll see in the following chapters, you can adapt this basic Stoic routine, and some of the same techniques, to help you cope with other challenges in life, such as pain, anxiety, and anger. You’ll therefore be learning to use similar techniques, but in a slightly different way.